


don't breathe the air (it's filled with broken promises)

by Myrime



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Grief, Hopeful Ending, I mean it's Infinity War we're talking about here, Loss, Multi, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Protective Pepper Potts, Returning Home, Steve Rogers Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 22:44:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15375024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myrime/pseuds/Myrime
Summary: Steve knows wars intimately. He loses every one of them.- After Infinity War, Steve comes home without hope. But he is not alone, and they might just be able to build something out of their ruins that will last.





	don't breathe the air (it's filled with broken promises)

Steve’s life is a series of wars; big and small, global and personal. He is born into sickness, and takes offence at every bully who crosses his way. Even getting to fight in the big war is a battle in itself. He dons the suit and every dispute becomes his own. He fights against ice and time. He becomes a hero in another century and still everyone wants a part of him. His old enemy is still not gone. (His old friend is not either.) He starts a civil war.

(Steve knows wars intimately. He loses every one of them.)

                                                         

* * *

 

When Steve hears that Tony is missing after the touchdown of Thanos’ forces in New York, it hits him more than it probably should. Two years of radio silence have alleviated none of his guilt, none of the pressing need to talk and, hopefully, make things right.  It is a pipe dream, of course, and not only because they appear to have a new war on their hands. Both of them are too stubborn, too hurt, to let this one simply go. (He still has not understood that there is no limit to pain, that there can always come more. He also still struggles to believe that there is no limit to love either.)

Tony’s absence leaves them at a tactical disadvantage too. Disregarding all of their personal problems, no one can deny that Tony knows how to fight a battle. _You just need to have the bigger stick_. And Tony has always been good at building the biggest stick of all.

So, the suit will be missed in whatever is to come. If Steve will miss the man inside of it too that is only for him to know. (And he knows it unfailingly, because he wanted them to be good, to be friends, and still they smashed it between their hands, bleeding dry of possibilities by the second.)

Natasha, next to him, says, “Let’s get Wanda,” which is the closest she will come to show her worry. And then they get to work.

                                                         

* * *

 

When the phone rings, finally, Steve is filled with the distinct hope that the reports are wrong, that Tony is very much not missing but already working on a plan to get them out of this. It also means the rumours of trouble are true or, maybe worse, that Tony is in danger

But when he picks up, it is Bruce with more bad news, heralding the end of life as they have known it.

“Captain,” Bruce says, voice all wrong, the title clumsy in Steve’s ear. He has not been called that in a long time, not without the intention to hurt. (He tries to imagine Tony saying, “Cap,” with wry amusement but cannot. The last time they spoke he was afraid and bitter and that is how he will always remember him, beaten by a friend.) “We need to find Vision.”

Vision. Infinity Stones. Thanos. None of it makes sense but Bruce is afraid and that is what has Steve listening closely. The only things Bruce is ever afraid of are losing the people he loves and, invariably, himself.

He hears that Asgard has fallen, that Thor is missing, likely dead, and Steve vows to do his best to spare Earth the same fate. (He likes to ignore that he is only a man too, enhanced or not. He hopes and fails and dies like everyone else.)

They gather, they fight, but there are only three of them left. Four if he counts Vision who is still, theoretically, playing for the other team – even if they fall in together as if they have never split.

Maybe that is what it takes. Give them an enemy big enough to turn them into friends again.

(Rhodey says, “Welcome back,” and there is honest relief in his voice, but he also does not turn his back to Steve and never mentions Tony, even though he must be out of his mind with worry. Again.

No one mentions his braces either. They see him walking and they smile, pretending not to hear the slight mechanical whirring that accompanies every single step he takes.)

                                                        

* * *

 

Steve still misses the feeling of the shield in his hand. The memory is tinged by so many bad things too, but it was always something he could cling to, something he carried with him from one century to the next.

He does not like Captain America, never really has. He was a symbol, a means to an end. Never him. He could wear the uniform, bear the shield, he could let them plaster his face all over posters and propaganda reels. But he could never really become this man, no matter that Erskine had told him they already are one and the same. (Maybe that is because he never really liked himself much either. There are so many promises he did not keep, starting with telling his mother he would not give her so much to worry about anymore, over going out dancing with Peggy, to telling Tony “Together,” when all they did was falling apart.)

So, he is not really sorry for leaving the shield behind, just the safety it offered. He knows how to fight without it. Has, in fact, carried out most of his battles with only his two hands and the kind of stubbornness that makes it impossible to give up.

(He gets a new shield, though, and it hampers his hope for a new beginning, but then they are facing ends here so he will soldier on as he has always done.)

                                                        

* * *

 

Bucky is at his side again, eyes alit whenever they look at each other. This is not the Winter Soldier staring back at him. (Steve has to remind himself of that several times. His brain has grown cautious where his heart still leaps and bounds.)

“Just like old times,” Bucky jokes and laughs when Steve grimaces.

“Let’s hope it ends better than the old times.”

(Both of them crawling home bloodied and tired after another back alley fight. Neither of them coming home from the war. Their kind of winning has always involved a lot of scars. Despite finding back to each other, Steve does not think happy endings are for them.)

“Till the end of the line.” Bucky speaks their promise like there are not seventy years between them. Seventy years of fighting their battles on their own, of dying and coming back to life, of yearning for simpler times.

(All of this, of course, is only true for Steve. For seventy years, Bucky fought other people’s battles. He lost himself to brainwashing and torture. He did not yearn for Steve because their childhood is a kingdom he still remembers only in fragments. For all the years that Steve slept, safely embraced by ice and the certainty of having saved lives, Bucky lost himself in a place he will never completely return from.)

                                                         

* * *

 

It does not end well and all Steve has left is grasping at dirt and empty air. He thinks it is not fair. (Half the world dissolves around them – around _him_ – and fairness has never played a part in it.)

Again he is left behind. Again he could not save the one he has once sworn all his oaths to.

Steve wonders whether his being still alive means he gets another chance or if it is just the punishment for all his failures.

                                                         

* * *

 

Tony comes back and once Steve knows he cracks the first smile in weeks. It fades quickly but the feeling of it stays with him. One less death he has to grieve. One less death he should have prevented. (What worth does a hero have if he fails?)

Tony comes back and looks as broken as Steve feels. When he asks Rhodey about it, the answer is clipped, merely a sigh. “Peter. You remember the boy from the airport? He didn’t make it.” (It’s always losing the people you know the names of that hurts the most.)

Tony comes back and he still does not want to see Steve, does not call on the phone that Bruce assures him he gave back.

(And what would they have to say to each other? Remember the time we started a civil war and split up? Maybe we could have prevented half the universe’s annihilation if only we stayed together.)

Steve goes to Peter’s funeral (no body filling the coffin) and wonders why letting go is so hard. The only grave he has dug for Bucky is in his heart.

                                                         

* * *

 

Rumours get loud that scientists are looking for a cure. (Death is not a sickness, though. It is nothing that can be healed.) Tony, of course, is in the middle of it, staring hollow-eyed at screens and papers, refusing press conferences because there is nothing to be said. (Yet.)

Steve sees him shortly when he accompanies Bruce to the lab, ready to do his part, while all Steve can offer is more of the same bleak grief.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” Tony tells him, managing to lift his hoarse voice into something honest. He looks like he has left half his soul in space, just like Steve has poured almost all of his into the dirt Bucky had left his last footprint in.

(It is absurd to witness the last conscious step of someone before losing them to nothingness, to see a life disintegrate. Even more so a life that Steve was once part of, that he has gone to such unforgiveable lengths to save.)

“I’m tired of running,” Steve answers, not sure what alternative he has. The world they have known has come to an end. If he stops going forward, he will be swallowed up. (He does not know whether he would truly mind.)

“Well, every room in the compound has turned into a lab or is a place for a giant sleepover. But the tower is still standing.”

It is an offer that, before (before Thanos and before Siberia, before a lot of ugly things they created themselves) would have been accompanied with a smirk, a nonchalant shrug.

Now, all Tony does is hand him his key card and say, “Don’t wait up.”

                                                         

* * *

 

The tower is different than he remembers. After Ultron he never stepped a foot inside it again, preferring to have his things delivered and consider this particular chapter finished. Being back now feels like coming home. (Although home, in this scenario, is fairly empty. No sign of the team they once were. He feels like he has never walked these halls before. And, in truth, the man he has become has not.)

The skyline of New York resembles a graveyard. All of life is in upheaval, scrambling to comprehend this madness never meant to touch human minds, or any mind at all. Looking out, all Steve can see is loss. Of opportunity, of potential, of faith.

He stands in front of the windows for hours, unmoving, barely breathing, but with his eyes wide open. (Barely the blink of an eye was needed for Bucky to vanish. How can he stand to stop looking ever again? How can he stand to _keep_ looking?)

“Mr. Rogers,” Pepper speaks in his back. She is blinding, when he turns, a beacon of beauty, fire in the night.

For a moment hate flares inside of him. How can it be that Tony is allowed to keep both of his best friends when he lost his? (He thinks of Natasha being left to him but not Wanda and Sam. He thinks of the Spider-boy and is ashamed. Fairness has never mattered to Death.)

“You’re still here,” he croaks, failing to smile but at least managing not to sound bitter.

Pepper stares at him intently. “None of us had a choice.”

(Steve knows all about choices. He knows that he would have laid down his life without hesitation for Bucky. He also knows that Tony would have given his for any of theirs.)

 

* * *

 

Tony stumbles into the tower three days later and Pepper does not comment on his work load. She just pushes food and water in front of him and opens her arms for him to stumble into. It has the air of a ritual to it. Steve watches them cling to each other, reassuring themselves that they are both still real.

(Sometimes, at night, Steve digs his nails into his own flesh, testing the same. He is always disappointed when it hurts, when he is still alive.)

Instead of turning to the food, Tony then faces Steve and holds out his hand. It does not feel like a peace offering, not a show of forgiveness, but when Steve takes it, Tony lets out a deep breath, caught somewhere between a sob and utter relief.

“I keep seeing ghosts,” Tony says without explaining anything. Then he eats and does not demand coffee.

Afterwards, Pepper leads him off to bed. It is barely one in the afternoon and still she does not emerge until late at night and tells Steve, “Nightmare,” when she finds him still in the same spot as they have left him. “Tony will go back to the compound now.”

(He watches them go and wonders why everybody seems to be always leaving.)

Steve decides to have a meal ready for when they come back. (It makes his waiting seem slightly less as if he does not know what to do with the air breathes and the space he fills. He hopes it means his heart is not beating in vain.)

                                                       

* * *

 

They develop routines of their own. Tony sleeps and works, and he always touches them when he passes. Sometimes he lingers, taking in Steve as if to commit him to memory. Sometimes they talk. (Always they feel that sharing a burden is easier than shouldering it alone and Steve muses whether that means they trust each other again, but dares not to hope because Siberia might be overshadowed by something bigger for now but demons never truly leave.)

Steve cooks and trains and keeps his ear to the ground for news of any kind (even though he has no interest in battles anymore, having been thoroughly beaten.) Tony calls him their anchor one night, but he is not wont to joke anymore so Steve does not know how to take it. (What good is an anchor anyway that keeps drifting aimlessly itself?)

Pepper tells him, “Thank you,” and sometimes lets him watch over Tony when he sleeps. She still has a company to lead (although she confesses she cannot bear the weight of it when all Tony does is live in the past while she tries to preserve their future.) She says it is important to have something to come back to, even if everything fails.

Steve wonders what he has left and comes up short until he looks around and finds himself home.

                                                         

* * *

 

In the end, all of their struggle is not about winning but about life. They make the best of it, the three of them together. They build a home.

It is only paper walls at first and tip-toeing around each other and wondering whether anything is real anymore. It solidifies slowly, steadily.

They measure success differently now. In breaths and smiles and nights slept through. Victory is something carved.

Steve hesitates to call them happy. But they are alive and glad for it too. That is more than he could have hoped for when he watched his world dissolve into nothing.

There is definitely something now. Something good.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I was trying something a bit different here. Hope you like it. Don't hesitate to tell me your opinion.  
> (Maybe I'll turn it into a longer piece, but the only time I have to write at the moment is from 6 to 7 in the morning. You can imagine how productive that is.)  
> Thank you for reading!


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